Menu

MSN Health and Fitness

The headaches, sleepiness and general out-of-it feeling of jet lag is a punishing side effect of long-distance travel by plane. But relief may be in sight in the form of a gene called Id2, suggests a recent study in Current Biology.

We humans are social creatures, but people with Williams syndrome are more so than most. Famously outgoing, these people will approach even strangers to say hello. This may stem from a brain that is keenly attuned to happy faces, and may help explain why some of us are extroverts and some of us are not.

College-age students with a type of gene that increases their chances for getting Alzheimer’s disease also have a brain that acts differently from those who don’t share that risk. What’s unsettling is that this difference can be detected decades before Alzheimer’s typically develops.

Like the chain of gadgetry—receivers, wires, switches—that lets us talk by telephone, many of the genes implicated in schizophrenia have a hand in setting up and maintaining connections between neurons. Tinkering with any one of them could result in the scrambled thoughts and blurred reality of schizophrenia.

Whether you are a French chef vying for a three star rating, or a mere mortal trying to make it through the day, your outlook on life and how you react to stress may depend on a molecular middleman that resides deep inside your brain cells.

Why do we say we’ll do one thing, but actually do something else? We humans are supposed to be rational beings, but time after time our emotions and their messy ways interfere with our goals. To understand how this happens, scientists are tracking what is going on in the brain when we make up our minds.